Adrian Langker’s paintings begin from an interaction between instinct and reflection. His inspiration often comes from something immediate, sometimes as simple as a favourite sense or a favourite hobby, before moving into a contemplation of values.

This dual gut and mind approach can be seen in his Bubbler Paintings.

Based in childhood memory, they recall the visceral intensity of the primary school playground: tip footy played on hot asphalt, scabby knees, the avoidance of broken fixtures, debris, rotting fruit and decay. The rush to the bubbler after the bell. The urgent pleasure of gulping down cold water.

From a more considered perspective, these same bubblers become exalted symbols of social will: public infrastructure funded together by citizens, offering something essential and life-giving, freely and equally, fresh running water. The everyday object is chosen for both personal and political, intimate and collective reasons.

With a distinctive style of dramatic contrasts, muscular, arterial forms, and vivid colour, Langker draws attention to the intensity embedded in the ordinary low profile experience. His work turns away from the addiction to constant motion or colonial ideas of exotic escape. In contrast to what the writer Michael Foley has described as “Commotionism”, the belief that meaning is found in perpetual darting activity, Langker’s paintings celebrate immersion and quiet attention.

Many works incorporate the visual effect of “bokeh”, the out-of-focus parts of photographs, which are transformed into layered, geometric abstractions. These compositions invite the viewer to slow down and to become absorbed in adapted fragments of the familiar.

Through paint, Langker tells stories guided by emotion, memory and a search for comfort or repair, finding wonder and reason not in distant places or ideas but grounded firmly in the textures and experiences found on home soil.